


Phil bleaches and dyes Dan's hair

by bugdude



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hair Dyeing, Introspection, Lots of cuddles, M/M, Seriously tooth-rotting fluff, crisis twink!dan, phil dyes dan's hair, very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:22:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28639218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugdude/pseuds/bugdude
Summary: It's all in the title. Non-AU except for the whole dyeing Dan's hair thing.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 52





	Phil bleaches and dyes Dan's hair

**Author's Note:**

> ...  
> this was supposed to be a choatic crack fic and instead it's pure fluff. not quite sure how that happened.  
> i dye my hair lots, so this is accurate (i could have made it way harder for them though).  
> uh yeah i think that's all you have to know. oh, and that i wrote this instead of a) sleeping or b) working on a really important essay for school that's due in less than 24 hours. woop.  
> enjoy!

It started off as a joke, really.

Dan couldn’t stop talking about dyed hair and crisis twinks after their Stereo show, kept shoving his phone in Phil’s face and asking for his opinion on various filtered hair colours. Phil even included a particularly candid blonde Dan picture in the final video, thought it was too good to pass up on.

Phil had been sure that it was all just a joke. Only now it’s been two weeks and Dan is still poking him in the middle of the night and asking whether he thinks blue hair or pink hair gives off bigger crisis twink vibes and if bleach would completely ruin his curls and Phil is sort of catching on to the fact that this might be more than a random idea.

He could have caught on earlier now that he really thinks about it. Dan spent almost an entire month talking about nail polish before admitting that he really wanted to try it himself. He discussed veganism and meal prepping at every possible occasion until Phil asked if he wanted to try it.

They’re both not the best at communicating, but they do know each other. Phil should have known.

Phil impulse-buys everything on Amazon before he can think twice about it. They’re lucky enough that he doesn’t really have to worry about wasting money, that it won’t be a big deal if they don’t end up using anything. It’s nice. He does his best to be grateful for that as often as he can.

He tells Dan that night, curled up together in bed. A whisper of “I bought something for you.” Dan only snuffles a bit in response, but Phil understands. Understands that someone putting thought into doing something for Dan will always mean the world to him, even when he doesn’t know what it is yet. Even when he doesn’t know how to react.

It’s the same way he knows that him pulling Dan closer into his arms conveys all of that.

Phil really wasn’t prepared for the sheer giddiness on Dan’s face when he rips open the Amazon packages the next day. Several different brands of bleach that all promise not to be too damaging, a set of proper bowls and brushes for hair stuff, one of those hairdresser aprons, and, most importantly, bottles of pink and blue hair dye, as well as a pastel mix-in to adjust the shade.

Dan stops reverently stroking the dye bottles and looks up at Phil. “You absolute spork,” he says, his eyes full of what Phil has come to understand as ‘fond’. “Come here.”

They hug, and it’s nice, and then they kiss and that’s nice too. Dan is soft and warm and has the innate ability of always making Phil feel like everything’s okay, like there’s a bubble around him protecting them from everything shitty in the world.

Then Dan pulls away (but only ever so slightly) with a grin. “Will you do it for me now?”

Phil laughs at his eagerness and tugs at a stray curl. “Yeah. Do you know what your crisis colour’s gonna be yet?”

“I think I’m just going to embrace it and go with the pink. But like a pastel shade, okay? It’ll work better with the whole doomsday wardrobe situation I think.”

“Mhm,” Phil say, still running his fingers through Dan’s hair. “It’ll look like cherry blossoms.”

“Sap.”

“You love it.”

“Yeah.” Dan pulls him in for another kiss, just a soft peck this time. “I really, really do.”

Forty-five minutes later finds them sitting on the floor in their biggest bathroom, the stench of bleach all around them and a slightly concerned frown on Dan’s face.

“It really itches,” he says, looking up at Phil. “Is it supposed to itch this much?”

“You’re the one who did all the research.”

“Yeah, but I think this is like with pregnancies. Like you can’t really describe the pain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.”

“Wow, Dan. I can’t wait to see the look on Louise’s face when I tell her you compared bleaching your hair to literally giving birth to another human being.”

“Shut up.”

Phil wants to kiss him, but they’ve already made enough of a mess as it is and the bleach is still in Dan’s hair, has to stay in for another twenty minutes. He’s not quite sure how strong this stuff is, but he doesn’t want to burn off his skin. He double checks around the sides of Dan’s head again just in case, to make sure that there isn’t any bleach drilling into his skull.

Dan gets it right away. “I’m all good,” he says, grabbing Phil’s hands. “I can only feel it on my scalp, nowhere else.”

It’s still a relief when they can finally wash it out and there really aren’t any holes in Dan’s head. Phil’s so busy checking on that that it takes him an extra second to process that Dan is actually blond right now.

“You look like an Australian surfer,” he says, giggling. It’s not a lie. Dan’s hair is still wet, his whole torso is, really, and his quarantine hair has just gotten long enough again to hang into his eyes. Paired with the newly blond transformation and removed from their half-packed bathroom, he looks like he could have come straight from the beach.

Dan laughs, hugging Phil from behind and getting water all over his shirt (he really doesn’t mind). “You and your weird surfer fantasies.”

“Says the person who follows seven Olympic divers on Instagram.”

“I told you, it’s only out of a genuine interest in the sport,” Dan whines, but he’s still laughing.

“Right,” Phil says. “Ready to transform from surfer boy into K-pop idol?”

They mix together the perfect shade, a pale pink that really does remind him of cherry blossoms and Japan and the rosy patch on Dan’s face. All lovely things.

Before Phil can apply the first strokes of colour, Dan grabs his wrist. “I have to take a picture! Blond unfiltered Dan has to be captured for eternity.”

So Phil sits back and watches Dan take two dozen selfies, then dutifully transforms into cameraman and takes a couple full body shots of Dan doing his best modelling poses. He’ll never get tired of watching Dan like this, loves this side of Dan just as much as the one who wears pyjamas for three days in a row and steals all of Phil’s covers at night.

Eventually they do get back to the task at hand. Phil’s dyed his own hair enough times to not totally suck at this part (although he does get Dan to do it for him more often than not nowadays). He double, then triple-checks that every strand of hair is completely coated in dye, then steps back in admiration.

Even with the dye still in Dan’s hair, Phil can tell that the shade is absolutely perfect. How Dan continues to look more beautiful every single day will never stop being a mystery to him.

He says as much and Dan punches him, then pouts because they’re back to waiting before they can cuddle again. They go through Dan’s Tumblr together, admiring and liking fan-art whenever they see it (not that specific kind of art, though) and laughing at the wide assortment of memes that have found their way to Dan’s dashboard.

Phil is particularly delighted when they stumble upon that gif of a cow with Thor hair, making Dan replay it over and over again, just like he did all those years ago.

And then the timer on Dan’s phone dings and Phil’s watching pink water drain down the bathtub, running his hands through Dan’s wet hair to make sure he’s gotten everything out, and second he gives the all-clear Dan has him in a tackle on the floor, water everywhere. Neither of them cares.

“We really are pathetic, huh,” Dan mumbles. “Can’t even go thirty minutes without this.”

Phil knows that they’re both thinking of all the times that they had to do just that anyways, times when it was okay and times when it really wasn’t, but he pushes it all aside in favour of pulling Dan up and over to the mirror.

“What do you think?”, he asks, hoping that it’s what Dan had envisioned, that it hadn’t been a mistake to encourage this (he doubts it, but he’s still worried. He’s usually a little bit worried).

Dan stares at his reflection. Phil thinks he might see him blink back a tear or two. “It’s everything,” Dan says, and somehow Phil knows exactly what he means by that.


End file.
